I had a French teacher come to me looking for a solution last week.  She wanted to use a discussion board like the wall on Facebook.  She would like her students to be able to reply to comments  that she makes and then have the ability to reply back to students.  She would also like for her students to receive a notification when a reply is posted to a comment that a student has posted.  A closed group in Facebook would be an easy solution, but the district that I work for blocks Facebook.  She has used Edmodo in the past too, but now the district is also blocking student access to Edmodo. (I'll save the blocking of tools and resources from students for another post.)  So, I searched for other online discussion boards and found some options and then thought of Google.  A Google Community will work for her and provide a discussion environment for her students.  It will allow her to establish a group and for students to be identified throughout the online discussion.

A teacher can create a Google Community within Google+. Privacy levels can be set so that only members of the Community can see the content and notifications can be turned on when posts or comments are added to the discussion.

Students will need to create a Google account if they do not already have one.  Since we are at the high school level, students meet the 13 year old age requirement that Google has in place for creating an account.

To set up a Google Community follow the directions below. (*Note the instructions are based on the "new" google+ layout not the classic.)

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I love to learn and I love to share what I have learned.  I sometimes struggle with who to share my learning with and when.  It's actually been a passion of mine to find new ideas and tools that can be used in education and try them out. The problem in the past has been making the connection of how to get the information to the person who could most use it at the time.  

It sounds so simple, however it took me into year three with our school being 1:1 to have what I refer to as my "lightbulb moment". ​In my learning over the summer of 2015, two things stuck with me; the importance of pedagogy and the need to deliver resources to a teacher when they are relevant to him or her.   The second part of this moment was realizing that we don't know what we don't know until we learn it. How do you coach a teacher with a new tool or technique?  You simply ask a teacher, what would you like to do in your classroom that you aren't doing now? What would you like to learn about?  It's amazing, ask a teacher what they'd like to try or what they'd like to learn about and the flood gate can open. I don't always have an immediate answer for them, I get to do what I love then and go and learn to bring back a solution or a resource to them.  Even better, I have been able to tap into the  resources I have tagged and tucked away in Evernote! 

There will be those that ask, yes but what about the teachers that don't ask or that don't want to learn something new.  My answer there is that is ok! I know that there are very few teachers that don't want to get better.  The trick here is not waiting for them to ask, but reaching out to them and asking them.  What is a need, a question or a desire to learn for one teacher is not necessarily what the teacher in the next room needs or cares about.  It's actually the exact same with students, if they have a question, an interest, a passion they are going to be interested and dive into the learning.  Teachers are no different.  One size fits all professional development just doesn't work.  The process of change and innovation revolves around relationships and meeting people's needs.

My lightbulb moment I believe has set me on the right path. I have obstacles to overcome to get to a point of being able to get to teachers effectively.  I have had a few great experiences in my building this fall and I look forward to making more connections with teachers.  I am blessed to be in an environment where I work with amazing people and anything is truly possible.  So here's to lighting up the building through simply asking one teacher at a time, what do you want to do differently or learn to do?